The Devil's in the Details (7 page)

I’d had about a zillion wet dreams since climbing onto the No-More-Mindless-Sex-until-I-Find-the-One Express, so it didn’t really surprise me when I woke up to feel a trickle of sweat at my temple. Moisture pooled between my breasts. My favorite Hello Kitty tee clung to me. The damp sheets stuck to my skin.

I smiled as I remembered the way dream-Cutter had touched me. Soft and slow at first. Then strong and purposeful. The man had great hands. And a great mouth. And a really great—

A face full of water smacked into me, cutting off my oxygen supply and drenching my hair. I bolted upright, sputtering and gasping for air.

My eyes flew open, wildly registering the woman standing next to the bed before I clamped them shut again.

No.

No. No. No. No.
No.

I was used to the texts. The phone messages. The e-mails. The penis-shaped cookie bouquet for my last birthday. All constant reminders from my mother of who I was and what was expected of me.

But two actual visits from her in less than twenty-four hours?

Forget waiting to be damned. I was already in Hell.

“Again.” Her voice echoed in my head and my eyes popped open in time to see my mother’s ever-faithful assistant step forward with a half-full pitcher in her hands.

“Stop!” I held up my hands to ward off Cheryl and her liquid attack. “I’m awake. Seriously.” I scrambled from the bed. The floor
tilted for a split second as I struggled to get a grip. “I’m up. All the way up.”

“It’s about time.” My mother flicked a piece of invisible lint from her tailored red suit. She’d pulled her hair back today, which accented her sculpted cheekbones and her full, red lips. “We’ve been standing here
forever
, haven’t we, Cheryl?”

“Actually it’s been four minutes and fifty-three seconds,” Cheryl offered.

“Exactly.” Lillith Damon glanced at her diamond-encrusted Rolex. “I’m late for an appointment. We’re working on a new downtown condo development. I’m doing the decorating. Now.” She eyed me, and the rings around her pupils fired the same shade as her designer suit. “Show me what you’ve put together so far.”

I was trembling with anxiety. Soaking wet. And suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room. “You just commissioned me yesterday,” I pointed out.

“And?” My mother arched one perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “Surely you’ve put some plans together by now. The wedding is in two weeks, after all.”

“Two weeks? But you said next month.”

“I’ve changed my mind. The news has spread fast and there’s a lot of dissension. Two weeks is all I can spare.”

My heart did a double thump and my stomach bottomed out. “But it takes longer than that to get the invitations printed.”

“Then I guess you’d better get moving.” She must have noted my loss of color, because she frowned. Her eyes glowed again. “Surely that won’t be a problem.”

“Of course not,” I managed, desperately trying to swallow the golf-ball-size lump in my throat. “The sooner, the better.” Don’t freak. Just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Easy. Calm.

“Good, because time is of the essence. Bella and Levita are probably already plotting a way to stop me.”

And I knew just how they planned to do it.

Back off now or you’re dead.

“And I’m sure Lucy will be in on it when they do. That I-could-care-less-about-the-family-biz is just a front. She’s a Damon, which means she’s as power hungry as the rest of us.”

I debated telling my ma about the bloody message all of a nanosecond before nixing the idea. Hey, we’re talking the Devil. She wasn’t exactly known for her calm, rational thinking. She was sure to want to know who had called and/or paid me a visit last night. And that was the thing. I had suspicions, but I didn’t
know
. Sure, the AB negative was probably a dead giveaway that it was Bella, but it could also have been one of her daughters. Maybe Portia. Or Hester. Or one of the others.

Not that my mother would waste time finding the guilty party. She would take them all out, and I didn’t want any innocents—even one of my mean cousins—getting hurt in the cross fire.

“It’s imperative that we move swiftly.” My mother flicked some lint off her jacket. “But not too swiftly. I don’t want them to think I’m worried that they’ll succeed, which I most definitely am
not
. Even so, the less time they have to plot, the better. Did you call Landon Parks to officiate?”

I remembered her mention of the demon judge yesterday. “Not yet, but—”

“Do it ASAP. He’s the only one who can officiate. Now,” she went on, “we’ll do it the Saturday after next, around sixish. Also, I was thinking we might include Cerberus in the ceremony. You know he’s always been such a faithful hellhound, and Cheryl here, being the animal lover that she is, suggested he could be the ring bearer—” She stalled in midsentence and gave me the evil eye. “Shouldn’t you be writing this stuff down?”

I spent the next ten minutes jotting down a ton of notes that my mother had forgotten to give me yesterday, including Cerberus as ring bearer and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as ushers.

“Oh, and I’m going with thirteen bridesmaids instead of the original twelve because thirteen has always been my unlucky number.”

A sliver of hope blossomed inside me. Crazy, right? I was the wedding planner. I didn’t have time to be a bridesmaid. At the same time, she was my mother and I was her daughter, and it would be sorta, kinda nice for her to at least ask. “Who did you have in mind?”

She shrugged. “Whoever. Just plug in some of your cousins and we’ll be good to go.”

My chest tightened. Not because I was, you know, upset or anything. I barely got a birthday gift from the woman. A heartfelt invite to be a bridesmaid would have been stretching it way too far.

“Maid of honor?”

“Cheryl can stand in. She’ll be in charge of most of the duties anyhow. And that’s it,” Mother finished with a quick glance around, as if seeing the apartment for the first time. “This is where you live?”

“For the past two years. I know it’s a little rough,” I rushed on when her nose wrinkled in disdain, “but I’ve been fixing it up. I painted last month.”

She eyed the walls. “If I were you, I’d shoot whoever sold you this horrific color.” And then she disappeared in a sharp staccato of heels on hardwood, Cheryl following. The door slammed and I was finally alone.

Not that it would last. My voice mail was full and it was just a matter of time before more demons started popping in.

Or popping me.

I thought of the threat scribbled in blood and my hands trembled. Someone was really and truly trying to scare the bejesus out of me, and they would try again, particularly since I had no intention of backing off. I was going to see this thing through.

In the meantime…

I changed into clean clothes, powered up my laptop, and spent the rest of my Sunday morning lining up venues for the wedding from Hell.

Five hours later, I’d made twenty-three phone calls, left eight voice mails, and withstood two up-close-and-personal visits from my cousins Marjorie and Gregoria, who just happened to be walking by my duplex.

Um, yeah.

I’d
so
had my fill of nosy relatives.

When it came to warding off evil spirits (that’s PC for The Cousins), I should have been an expert. I was an evil spirit, after all, so I’d learned early on about salt, sage, and horseshoes. They were Demon 101. The thing was, I knew that stuff worked when humans used them to ward off a spirit. I wasn’t so sure they would be effective for one demon to use on another demon.

And I
had
to use something.

I decided enough was enough after my cousin Portia just happened to drop in. And my cousin Millicent.
And
my cousin Janna.

I needed some expert advice on the situation, which was why, after fifteen minutes on Google, I found myself near the Galleria, in the old, revamped Montrose area. A row of houses had been turned into a shopping mecca not too long ago, complete with a coffee shop, an Italian bistro, a gift boutique and…bingo.

Above a white house with bright-pink trim, a neon sign glowed in the window: Bliss, Bling & Otherworldly Things.

Yeah, baby.

I headed up the small walkway and pushed open the door. Forget Scottish folk tunes or indie rock or any other spiritualist-type music—eighties hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” vibrated
from the speakers. Instead of sage and herbs, the sweet, sugary smell of pink cupcakes drifted from a candle in the corner (shaped, of course, like a pink frosted cupcake).

The entire place looked like the hot spot where zebras went to die. Girly zebras, that is. There was black-and-white
everything
—from lampshades edged with pink crystals to the love seat sitting against the far wall to the swag curtains outlining a door that led to an adjoining room to the welcome mat under my feet.

There wasn’t a yak’s tongue or a voodoo doll in sight. Rather, dozens of rhinestone flip-flops lined the opposite wall. Sequined handbags in every color hung from hooks overhead. What looked like faux Pandora jewelry filled the cases at the counter. Behind it stood a fortysomething woman with lots of curves, a zebra-tipped manicure (no, really), and a distressed pink rhinestone T-shirt that read
Sassy
.

I was so filing a complaint with Google.

“All of our Fandora is ten percent off today,” Sassy—complete with eighties hair to match the song pounding in the air—informed me in a rich Texas twang, motioning to the display in front of her. Her pale-gray eyes twinkled, and I glimpsed Sassy’s dream man—Toby Keith in a black cowboy hat. “I’ve got toe rings two for one. And we’ve also got this divine bracelet.” She motioned to a silver-looking charm-type bracelet hugging her thick wrist. “It’s not the real thing, but it’s half the price.”

“I’m afraid I might be in the wrong place.”
Ya think?

“Well, what is it you’re looking for, sugar?”

“Not really flip-flops or costume jewelry.” I glanced around before giving her an apologetic smile.

“I’ve got T-shirts too,” she added, pointing a zebra-tipped finger at the doorway leading to the next room, which was filled with clothing racks and jeweled cowboy boots.

“Sorry.” I backtracked toward the door.

“There are a few pair of faux designer jeans,” she added. “And belts. And against the back wall there’s an entire display of amulets to ward off all those evil buggers.”

I put on the brakes and turned so fast I gave myself whiplash. “What did you just say?”

“They’re on sale. Our potions too. A bottle of our Lover’s Delight is half off. So is our top seller—the Ballbuster. It’s for SOBs who don’t pay their child support. A few drops on a pair of his old boxers and Mr. Happy will shrivel up quicker than a banana in a dehydrator.” She grinned. “It works on cheating boyfriends too.”

“Do you have anything to help with unwanted demons?”

“Right this way.” She rounded the counter, her flip-flops smacking the floor. She led me into the adjoining room, past the clothing racks to a bookshelf set up against the far wall. The top row had—surprise, surprise—horseshoes. There were also amulets and jars filled with all sorts of creepy-looking contents (bingo on the yak’s tongue). Below that were several rows of books that included everything from
How to Embrace Your Inner Demon
to
Ghouls Are from Mars and Zombies Are from Venus
.

Sassy might be a human, but she knew her supes, too. Then again, most witches did.

I noted the silver moon-shaped ring—a symbol of one of Houston’s largest covens—on Sassy’s hand as she pulled out a particular book with a bright-yellow cover.

She flipped through a few pages of
The Idiot’s Guide to Demons
until she seemed to find what she was looking for. “Here we go. There are several possibilities. You can burn sage throughout the house and recite a cleansing ritual.”

“I think that might violate my building’s fire code.” And screw me royally on account of I’m a demon and I live in the duplex. I wasn’t about to find myself supernaturally evicted because of a little herbal bonfire.

“You can protect the place with holy water.”

“I don’t do holy water either.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Agnostic?”

“Claustrophobic.” Liquid would seep into the woodwork and carpet and be impossible to get out. My ma and cousins wouldn’t just be locked out.
I’d
be locked
in
.

Had I thought about this stuff or what?

“Don’t you have something that’s more here today and gone tomorrow?” I asked. “I’m leasing.”

Her brows drew together and I knew I’d screwed myself with the
claustrophobic
comment. She’d picked up on the fact that I wasn’t just a hot, vivacious human with a nasty demon problem.

Rather, I
was
the nasty demon.

I held my breath as I waited for her to start chanting an Eject spell or wag a yak’s tongue at me. Luckily, she seemed more interested in making a buck than casting me out.

She shrugged. “Many believe that a mixture of salt and various powdered herbs can form a barrier against demons.” She grabbed one of the numerous jars that lined the top shelf and unscrewed the lid to reveal a bright-pink powder mixed with white crystals. “You could try sprinkling this around the doors and windows, and then just suck it up the next morning with a DustBuster.”